Dispatches from the Ukrainian front

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Dispatches from the Ukrainian Front" (Click Here – Recorded Future News, 27 February 2026)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Click Here dives deep into the changing face of modern warfare in Ukraine, now four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion. Through firsthand accounts from a Ukrainian air defense officer and insights from a “tech detective” specialized in tracing the components of enemy drones, the show explores how the battlefield has shifted from traditional arms to a technological contest shaped by connectivity, satellite infrastructure, and global supply chains.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Life and War on the Front Lines

• Location and Conditions (00:17–01:56)

  • Ukrainian officer "Zahn," speaking from his home in Izum, 30km from the front, describes living much of his life in darkness due to persistent power outages.
    • Quote: "Right now I am in my house in Izum city where I live. It's 30km to the front line… I have power bank connected to my WiFi router to have Internet to stick with you." – Zahn (00:17)
  • He highlights the daily struggle and resourcefulness required just to remain connected.

• Role in the Military (06:35–06:52)

  • Zahn is deputy chief of Air Defense for the 3rd Army Corps.
    • Quote: "My zone of responsibility is approximately 118 kilometers in length, 17 depths. We are holding the skies over the front line and trying to not give a chance for the enemy to go deeper." – Zahn (06:35)

2. The Evolution of Drone Warfare

• Rise of Drones as a Threat (06:52–08:47)

  • The Shahed 136 (now Geran), originally Iranian, is described as a “loitering munition” – essentially a flying explosive.
  • Russia reverse-engineered and mass-produced these, making them faster, stealthier, and more lethal.
    • Quote: "Now they're faster, harder to detect, capable of flying higher, carrying larger warheads, and coordinating in swarms designed to overwhelm Ukraine's air defenses." – Dina Temple-Raston (08:12)
  • Massive swarms challenge air defenses and threaten both frontline and civilian infrastructure.

• Diversity of Drone Threats (09:28–10:16)

  • Not just large Shaheds: A “zoo of drones” now crowds the sky, from small Mavic quadcopters to swarms of larger, coordinated drones.
    • Quote: "But between these two types of drones, there are zoo of drones on the battlefield… other hundreds of drones doing this simultaneously." – Zahn (09:28)
  • The sky has gone from benign backdrop to omnipresent threat.

• Battlefield Adaptation and Countermeasures (11:25–12:22)

  • Defensive technology has become much more sophisticated out of necessity.
  • Zahn shares a story of repurposing a malfunctioning radar from Vatican City to down drones.
    • Quote: "It was from Vatican City. We took that radar from Vatican City. So that radar was protecting the Pope..." – Zahn (12:47)

3. The Imperative of Connectivity – Starlink’s Role

• Starlink Infrastructure in Warfare (03:30, 13:19–15:08)
  • Unauthorized Starlink terminals had enabled Russian forces to coordinate attacks.
  • After Ukrainian lobbying, SpaceX restricted access, causing a sharp drop in Russian battlefield coordination.
    • Quote: "We see that it makes a lot of problems for them. And nowadays in our zone of responsibility, we face shaheds without Starlinks. Now there are no Starlinks on them." – Zahn (13:24)
  • Ukrainian officers observed an immediate reduction in Russian effectiveness and casualties after the cutoff.
    • Quote: "During the whole day, that was one casualty for all the front line of our corps. It's first time during the whole war…" – Zahn (15:18)

4. Tracing the Supply Chain: Tech Detectives

• Forensic Investigations of Drones (21:04–23:57)

  • Introduction of Damien Spleeters, a weapons investigator for Conflict Armament Research.
  • Damien and team analyze downed drones for unique components to trace supply chains back to the source.

• Commercial Technology in Weaponry (24:20–26:19)

  • 99.9% of components recovered in Russian, Iranian, and North Korean munitions are commercial, not military-grade.
    • Quote: “You cannot really expect a manufacturer to control the billions of little chips they make… to know exactly where it's going to end up.” – Damien Spleeters (26:19)
  • Investigators inform companies and governments about diversion to illicit uses.

• Impact of Disrupting Supply Chains (27:06–28:02)

  • Instances where timely identification of a new navigation chip blocked mass adoption in Russian drones.
    • Quote: "That one interruption forced not just a pause, but a total reset." – Karen Duffin (27:36)
    • Quote: "It's the difference between Russia being able to make 10,000 drones right now… and Russia being able to do that in a year." – Damien Spleeters (28:02)

5. Reality of Russian Stockpiles (29:21–30:42)

• Skepticism Regarding 'Stockpiling' Claims
  • Analysis of serial numbers shows that Russian and North Korean drones are being used almost as soon as they’re made—contradicting claims of a growing stockpile.
    • Quote: "The Shahed we see are produced a month or two before they are being used. It’s very, very rapid." – Damien Spleeters (30:34)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Challenge of Modern Air Defense:

  • "On the beginning it was enough to have a machine gun and… binocular, just to see it in the air and just shoot it… But nowadays it's not enough to have only guys on the ground. If you want to destroy air target, nowadays you should be in the air." – Zahn (11:25)

• On the Importance of Communication:

  • "The main thing on the battlefield is network and communication. Without it, you cannot fight." – Zahn (12:18)

• On the Changing Nature of Evidence in War:

  • "My main interest in looking at weapons… its whole chain of custody… you can then tell a story about the conflict you are looking at, about the war you’re looking at." – Damien Spleeters (24:59)

• On the Race Between Offense and Innovation:

  • "Our adversaries are very crafty, very creative. They don’t have to play by the rules. And therefore we need to out innovate them… whether you want to be the hunter or the prey, it’s up to you." – Damien Spleeters (31:17)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:17 | Zahn describes conditions in Izum, daily life near the front | | 06:35 | Zahn outlines his role as an Air Defense officer | | 08:12 | How Shahed drones evolved into Russia’s Geran | | 09:28 | Multiplicity and diversity of battlefield drones | | 11:52 | Role of echelons air defense, importance of network/communication | | 12:47 | The Vatican radar story | | 13:24 | Impact of Starlink access on Russian drones' effectiveness | | 15:18 | Observable decrease in Russian coordination after Starlink lockout | | 16:23 | Russian weapons being used almost immediately after production | | 21:04 | Damien Spleeters introduced, investigation process for downed drones | | 24:20 | Most drone components traced are commercial, not military-grade | | 27:06 | Disrupting supply chains—case of navigation system in Shahed drones | | 29:21 | Evidence (or lack thereof) for Russian stockpiles | | 31:17 | Innovating to keep ahead of adversaries |

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Style and Tone

The episode maintains a human, conversational tone while weaving in technical detail. Dina Temple-Raston’s interviews with frontline personnel and technical experts offer both empathy and clarity, steering through the jargon to focus on lived experience and impact.

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Conclusion

This episode of Click Here reveals how Ukraine’s war has become a struggle not just for territory, but for control of information networks, innovation, and global supply chains. The voices of frontline defenders and civilian investigators underscore a central lesson: in modern conflict, victory may be determined as much by who controls connectivity and supply chains as by who commands more tanks or troops.

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Transcript

[Dina Templewraston]

From Recorded Future News and prx, this is Click here. Where are you sitting right now?

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

Right now I am in my house in Izum city where I live. It's 30km to the front line and from this city, a lot of good and interesting things for the front line happening.

[Dina Templewraston]

We first met Zahn on the fringes of the Munich Security Conference, that annual gathering where generals and diplomats and defense officials talk about war far from any battlefield. Last year, Vice President J.D. vance used the forum to admonish European leaders about what he called democratic backsliding. This year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US Will always be bound to Europe as family. But outside the main halls, away from the speeches and the motorcades, we spoke with three active duty Ukrainian officers about what the war actually looks like right now. Zahn was one of them because he's still serving on the front lines. We're only using his call sign. And you're sitting in the dark, you said?

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

Yes. No electricity, Nothing for now. And it's already pretty dark. But I have power bank connected to my wi fi router to have Internet to stick with you.

[Dina Templewraston]

And are you cold? Are you wearing a jacket?

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

It's pretty, you know, sometimes even if electricity is cut it off. But for example, the water and the heating is still working, so it's maybe not a hot water. And the pressure in pumps are not so powerful, but I still have something to, you know, to wash my face. And our batteries are not hot, but not cold to the zero.

[Dina Templewraston]

He's describing modern warfare while sitting in total darkness, running his Internet off a battery pack 30 kilometers from the front. And he and Ukraine are four years into a war that, according to researchers, has left hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers dead or wounded. Perhaps the worst losses seen in a conflict since World War II. Can you tell me about what you do in the army?

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

Yes, we are holding the skies over the front line and trying to not give a chance for the enemy to go deeper in Ukraine.

[Dina Templewraston]

And he says right now one of the most powerful weapons in this war isn't a missile or a tank. It's connectivity. I'm Dina Templewraston and from Recorded Future News and prx, this is Click Here, a podcast about how technology is changing everything. This week marks four years since Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine, a conflict that has lasted far longer and cost far more than many predicted. What began with armored columns and artillery barrages has evolved into something else entirely. A war shaped by software, satellites and machines in the sky. Today the state of play from the ripple effects of a recent Starlink disruption seen through the eyes of someone on

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

the front lines after new Minister of Defense cut it, we see that it makes a lot of problems for them.

[Dina Templewraston]

To a return to our story about the tech detectives tracking the hidden supply chains behind those weapons, following tiny components from shattered drone wreckage all the way back to the companies that made them stay with us. Support for Click Here comes from Servolai did you know that your IT team wastes half their day on repetitive tickets? The more your business grows, the more these requests pile up. Password resets, access requests, onboarding, all pulling IT away from meaningful work. With Servolai, you're guaranteed to cut half of help desk Tickets by Week 4 of your free pilot. It's easy to see why this makes sense. It saves time and money and lets IT teams focus on actual problems. And while legacy players are scrambling to adapt in the age of artificial intelligence, Serval was built for AI agents from the ground up. Your IT team describes what they need in plain English, and Serval generates production ready automations. Instantly, Servil powers the fastest growing companies in the world, like Perplexity, Mercer, Verkada and Klay. Get your team out of the help desk and back to the work they enjoy. Book your free [e-mail] clickhere that's S E-R-V-A L.com clickhere. Welcome back. A few weeks ago, Ukraine's Defense Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, said something unusual had happened along the front lines. Russian units had suddenly lost access to Starlink, the satellite Internet system that has become a kind of invisible infrastructure for modern warfare in Ukraine. For months, Russian forces had reportedly been using unauthorized Starlink terminals, many smuggled in through third countries, to coordinate units, guide drones, and transmit live battle video. Kyiv repeatedly pressed Elon Musk and his company to shut access down, and recently the company tightened controls on the network, allowing only registered terminals to connect. Unregistered terminals, including those in Russian hands, went dark almost overnight. In a war where seconds matter, losing connectivity can mean losing coordination, situational awareness, even the ability to call for help. Ukrainian officials say assaults slowed in some sectors as those communication systems failed. And while we can't independently confirm every battlefield detail Zahn shared, his account aligns with military and intelligence briefings we've received, and with reporting from other journalists, analysts and officials tracking the war. So you're an active duty soldier in Ukraine, right? Can you tell me about what you do in the army?

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

Yes, I am deputy chief of Air defense for the 3rd Army Corps. My zone of responsibility is approximately 118 kilometers in length, 17 depths. We are holding the skies over the front line and trying to not give a chance for the enemy to go deeper.

[Dina Templewraston]

In Ukraine, the weapon he's defending against most often doesn't roar like a jet or streak across the sky like a missile. It starts with a buzz, A harsh mechanical drone, like a motorbike circling overhead in the dark. The drone is called the Shahed 136. It was designed in Iran as a loitering munition, essentially a small aircraft packed with explosives that flies toward a target and detonates on impact. Russia began importing them in 2022, when its stocks of precision missiles were running low. They were cheap, simple, and expendable. Far less sophisticated than cruise missiles and much easier to produce. Early versions were slow, loud, and relatively easy to shoot down. Ukrainians nicknamed them mopeds.

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

So it was 100 attack per year for 2022, and maybe thousand or something for the next 23. What we have now is totally different.

[Dina Templewraston]

Russia ended up reverse engineering them, modifying them, and began manufacturing its own versions in large numbers.

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

It's not correct to name it shahed anymore, because for now, it's geran.

[Dina Templewraston]

Now they're faster, harder to detect, capable of flying higher, carrying larger warheads, and coordinating in swarms designed to overwhelm Ukraine's air defenses. On some nights, hundreds can be launched at once. And even if most are destroyed, the few that get through can still strike power plants, apartment buildings, military bases, or critical infrastructure, which is why these drones have become one of the defining weapons of this phase of the war. Can you tell me what a shahed attack is like these days?

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

It's pretty different day to day. More and more often, we have just swarms, just dozens of them, breaking our first line and second line of air defense, trying to go to the deep state of Ukraine and destroy everything what they see. So this is the easiest way for the enemy to destroy what he wants to destroy, and the hardest for us to eliminate it.

[Dina Templewraston]

One of the things either you said or one of your colleagues said when we were in Munich was that you literally cannot be above ground because of the drones, because it makes you kind of a sitting duck. You know this expression?

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

Yes, that's totally correct. But when we are speaking, and mostly in the Western world, when somebody hears drone, they're thinking of two drones. So maybe mavic dji, small one or shaheds. But between these two types of drones, there are zoo of drones on the battlefield. So for the battlefield itself, where soldiers are sitting under the ground, shahed is not a big problem because it's too big and the enemy choose to send it to the deep of Ukraine, to the middle of Ukraine, to the west of Ukraine or something. But shaheds do not affect a battlefield itself, but other hundreds of drones doing this simultaneously.

[Dina Templewraston]

So while Shaw heads often target cities and infrastructure far from the front, soldiers in the trenches face something else entirely. A dangerous mix of smaller drones constantly hunting for movement. It's not one kind of machine in the sky, it's dozens. And Jeanne says over the past four years, the sky has gone from background to threat.

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

So before it was just an slow engine. That drone was unable to maneuver, it was unable to fly fast, it was unable to fly high. So it was less than 1km and they did not have a lot of them. It's totally different from shahed. So this modern garains can fly fast, up to 500 km per hour. We have it now. They can fly on 5,000 meters and it's not a problem for them. They can be controlled from the ground, they can make small swarms, they can be in mesh systems, they can have Starlink on it.

[Dina Templewraston]

And it's all these things, speed, guidance, payload, that makes it much more difficult to fight. Is that correct?

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

Yes, it's totally correct. Because on the beginning it was enough to have a machine gun and, I don't know, binocular, just to see it in the air and just shoot it. And that was okay. But nowadays it's not enough to have only guys on the ground. If you want to destroy air target, nowadays you should be in the air. Oh, wait a moment. Now I have an electricity. Very good.

[Dina Templewraston]

What is your best defense in the air against the Shahed?

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

The main problem is to find the enemy in the air. So the best meaning of air defense now is echelons air defense system. So we have few hours to prepare. After that, when they come closer, we have small radars that can follow each shahed over our heads. The main thing on the battlefield is network and communication. Without it, you cannot fight.

[Dina Templewraston]

Communication matters in any war. But when the threat is buzzing above you, it becomes the difference between warning and surprise, between interception and impact. For air defense units like Zaans, radars are especially critical. They are the eye that turns invisible threats into trackable targets. And for Jean, one particular radar had an unusual origin story.

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

And you know that I have in my hands, it was from Vatican City. We took that radar from Vatican City. So that radar was Protecting the Pope. And it was some malfunction in there. They sent it to the producer to repair and we bought it.

[Dina Templewraston]

Wow.

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

And once it appear on the battlefield, in two weeks, we destroyed first enemy reconnaissance drone.

[Dina Templewraston]

You mentioned Starlink and the Shahed. Can you talk about that?

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

Yes. So it is the easiest way to operate over the Ukraine by any meaning of drone. For now, because we have electronic warfare on the ground, sometimes electronic warfare in the air, and mostly all radio channels are jammed. But to jam Starlink, I'm not sure that it's possible to jam Starlink as good as we can jam all other things. Starlink mini, it weighs less than kilogram, I think. Put it on the drone and you can control it even. Even on the low, low level. So 15 meters, 20 meters. But after new Minister of Defense cut it, we see that it makes a lot of problems for them. And nowadays in our zone of responsibility, we face shaheds without Starlinks. Now there are no Starlinks on them.

[Dina Templewraston]

What changes are you seeing? Because they don't have Starlink on these Russian Shahed type drones.

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

Shahed type drones are not close to the battlefield. So for battlefield, almost nothing change for soldiers. But for other meanings of communication, we see that enemy have a lot of problems with Serlink. Now, how reconnaissance work. Now, nowadays, guys from the other side, our enemy, they can see video translation in real time, what drone over the battlefield can see. And they can choose what to do with this information. But their translations, they were all related on the Starlink. And now enemy is blind. They cannot see in real life what's happening. Communication link is totally broken.

[Dina Templewraston]

And so you immediately could see when they convinced Starlink to cut off the illegal Russian ones, you could immediately see that they were blind.

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

Yes. You know, in that day, maybe in one or two days after that happened, in whole zone of responsibility of our corps, and during 24 hours, during the whole day, that was one casualty for all the front line of our corps. It's first time during the whole war, as I know. And that's also because they lost the communication between them.

[Dina Templewraston]

So this would have been in early February, late January.

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

Yes, yes, totally correct. Early February.

[Dina Templewraston]

The Trump administration said about a month ago that Russia was stockpiling a lot of weapons to try and put pressure on Ukraine to come to a peace deal, saying that Russia had all these weapons. We talked to people who look at the weapons when they are shot down and take them apart and try to figure out all the different components in the supply chain, and they are saying what they see are basically, Russia is shooting these shaheds almost as quickly as they are being made. Is that your experience?

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

Yes. I cannot tell about all the rockets because we don't, you know, finding them on the ground. But regarding shaheds, what we were found that, yes, sometimes it's almost day to day, so they produce it yesterday and today they already used. And of course, due to supply chains that you were asking about, unfortunately, through Belarusia, China and other countries that are friendly to Russia, they are still able to buy electronics and things on the western market.

[Dina Templewraston]

Right, Right. Are you going back to the front soon?

[Zahn (Ukrainian Officer)]

Yes, I think that tomorrow maybe I'll go to the commander post of one of the brigades. It's a little bit closer, but for now, even when you are 30km over the front line, you are not safe here. So now they can put the FPV on shaheds, on Garangs, and once they are flying over the city, they just, you know, platform for FPV to come closer to the city. And after that FPV start flying. So even here is pretty dangerous.

[Dina Templewraston]

The drones he's describing are no longer rare or experimental. They're a constant presence over Ukraine, mass produced, launched in waves, and built from components sourced from around the world. Which raises a different kind of question. Not just how to stop the drones in the air, but how to stop the system that keeps replacing them. Because every one people like Zhan shoot down leaves behind clues. A technological fingerprint. When we come back, a return to our tech detective story. The investigators who treat wreckage like evidence, tracing each fragment backward through factories, shell companies and shadow supply chains until the trail leads to somewhere or someone who would rather remain invisible. Stay with. Support for Click Here comes from Claude. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. I like it for research because when I'm digging into a story, sometimes a basic web search just won't cut it. Claude goes deeper. Think comprehensive, reliable analysis with links to every source, making connections that otherwise might take me hours to find. Claude also has this feature called artifacts. It lets you build custom tools without needing to write a single line of code. Ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today at Claude AI Clickhere. That's Claude AI Clickhere. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode, Claude AI Clickhere. How does the brain process memories? Why is AI a solution and a problem for our climate? What IS leadership in 2025? And the TED Radio Hour explores the biggest questions and the most complicated ideas of our time with the world's greatest thinkers. Listen now to the TED Radio Hour from npr. Welcome back. This is Click Here. And I'm Dina Templerestin. When most of us picture war, we picture destruction. Buildings flattened, infrastructure shattered, lives upended. But inside that wreckage, investigators see something, evidence, fragments that can reveal not just what exploded, but where it was made, who assembled it, and how it traveled across borders to get there. That's where our tech detectives come in, people who read debris the way forensic teams read DNA. Karen Duffin takes it from here. Air raid alerts rang across the country as Ukraine came under a wave of drones and missiles.

[Karen Duffin]

Let's start with this morning's drone attack on Kyiv.

[Damien Spleeters]

What can you tell us? Well, lots of loud bangs in the skies above.

[Karen Duffin]

Watching the attacks night after night, Damien Spleeters began to wonder if he could do something to slow down the attacks using, well, bureaucracy, international sanctions. He wondered if he could shut off the supply of weapons, not at the end of the line, but component by component. And this was not a fanciful aspiration because Damien is a weapons investigator, though that's not where he started.

[Damien Spleeters]

I started as a journalist, actually getting interested in weapons and how they are used and how they get into conflict areas.

[Karen Duffin]

That reporting led him to arms dealers and then to supply chains and eventually to conflict armament research, which is where he works now alongside other tech detectives, people who governments call when they're trying to separate battlefield reality from battlefield theater. When movies tell stories about the global arms trade, it usually involves glamorous weapons dealers, shadowy brokers, deals in dim hotel bars.

[Damien Spleeters]

I supplied every army but the Salvation Army. This is the Hollywood vision, you know, of how it works. But weapon diversion is much more mundane than that.

[Karen Duffin]

Instead, weapons investigation, well, it looks something a bit more like this.

[Damien Spleeters]

Okay, so we are walking in this room, and in front of US is a Shahed 131 that was recovered by Ukrainian forces.

[Karen Duffin]

And Damien and his team had collected pieces of a downed drone. It had landed beside a building in Kharkiv, largely intact. And we asked him to record the team as they investigated. It's this kind of thing that weapons inspectors actually do. They pull fragments like these out of the wreckage of an attack and piece them together to reveal what actually happened, not just on the battlefield, but leading up to it.

[Damien Spleeters]

So we see only a little substrate of what is being used, but it's a good example of what's going on.

[Karen Duffin]

What he's looking at here is the Shahid 131 drone. You can picture a paper plane made of fiberglass, no bigger than a kayak. And this one is missing a wing.

[Damien Spleeters]

We can see the carcass right there.

[Karen Duffin]

Its engine is small, like lawnmower sized, so it's pretty slow moving and it's easy to hear coming. So a lot of them, like this one, end up getting shot down.

[Damien Spleeters]

All right, that's good. It's well aligned. All right, so let's take a few shots here.

[Karen Duffin]

Damian photographs each of its components individually. It's a meticulous, almost forensic process, something he's been doing in Ukraine since 2018. Each component carries clues. If you understand them well enough, they can tell you where the pieces came from, almost like fingerprints. Take semiconductors.

[Damien Spleeters]

The way it usually works with the semiconductor industry is that the type of marking you'll have on some chips denotes the week and year of manufacture. And through that information, usually they can find records of, you know, a list of distributors that got the parts from there.

[Karen Duffin]

Damien identifies who bought those components and who bought them after that, eventually taking this whole chain of evidence and tracing from the battlefield where the bomb dropped all the way back to its origin. Almost like a crime scene investigator, except he's not trying to solve the murder case. He's trying to slow a war.

[Damien Spleeters]

My main interest in looking at weapons is that it functions to me as a physical document, its whole chain of custody and, you know, all the hands it went through and where it was made and how it arrived there and how it was used and all that. And I think through that, you can then tell a story about. About the conflict you are looking at, about the war you're looking at.

[Karen Duffin]

And the way Damian works to slow the war he's looking at is by investigating the supply chain. Supply chains are the big guns in his line of work. Because of sanctions. Russia might not care about sanctions, but the companies who make these components, they often do because they can face heavy fines, blacklists, even criminal charges.

[Damien Spleeters]

We can say, look, it looks like this customer of yours, we found them repeatedly, and you may want to look into it. We don't provide any legal or business advice. We're not doing that. We provide information, information the government can't

[Karen Duffin]

always provide because it could be considered a military secret. But the thing is, a lot of the components Damien is finding, they aren't military. Grade, they're commercial parts, like those semiconductors. They find their way into not just weapons, but also phones, computers, TVs.

[Damien Spleeters]

99.9% of the components we found in Russian, Iranian, and North Korean missiles are commercial. And in nature, they're not even up to military standard. So, you know, you cannot really expect a manufacturer to control the, you know, billions of little chips they make that are not even uniquely marked to know exactly where it's going to end up.

[Karen Duffin]

So until Damien shows them, we know

[Damien Spleeters]

for a fact that we've avoided a lot of headaches to some of those companies because some of their customers were just like bad people and they didn't know about it.

[Karen Duffin]

For Damien, the goal isn't to catch anyone out after the fact. It's to try to intervene while the system is still moving.

[Damien Spleeters]

I remember a case where we found a new navigation system in one new variation of the Shahed. And we had number four, and that

[Karen Duffin]

meant Russia was still testing it before it went into mass production.

[Damien Spleeters]

So right at the beginning, and we could identify the Hong Kong company that was the end user and certainly the diversion party, we caught it before they could actually accept that order for 10,000 items.

[Karen Duffin]

And that one interruption forced not just a pause, but a total reset.

[Damien Spleeters]

Now they have to find another navigation system. They have to find new companies to set up a new network to get it.

[Karen Duffin]

This is the quiet power of supply chain investigations, because to interrupt a supply chain is to throw sand in the gears of the war machine, to basically hit pause on the war.

[Damien Spleeters]

It's the difference between Russia being able to make 10,000 drones right now and launching waves, and Russia being able to do that in a year. And it makes a difference.

[Karen Duffin]

That gap doesn't just show up on a spreadsheet. It shows up in buildings that never get bombed and people who never get attacked. Late last year, Damien's investigations took a turn when the Trump administration made an alarming claim. They said that Russia isn't just firing weapons, it's stockpiling them. And this was shocking because with a stockpile of weapons, Russia could threaten not just Ukraine, but Europe and even beyond. Some people did not buy this claim. Instead, they figured the US Was just bluffing, trying to pressure Ukraine to accept the peace deal. Damien, suddenly he had in his hands not just evidence that could thwart a supply chain, but evidence that could prove or disprove this alarming claim, a claim that could impact the potential end of this war. So he started looking for clues right away, this time in serial numbers.

[Damien Spleeters]

The indication of stockpiling is based on the serial number of the missile. So we can, we can say that based on that, we can confirm it by the date on the components. If I were to see, you know, missiles that are made using Russian components almost exclusively, I would think it's a, it's a good sign.

[Karen Duffin]

If he saw that a lot of the missiles were being made inside Russia, it would be a sign that the claim was true. A sign that the country is self sufficient enough to produce its own weapons and thus strong enough to start stockpiling. But that is not what he's seeing. There is basically no change to the weapons coming through Damien's warehouse, just as he's seen for the past few years. Those weapons are not from Russia. They're from Iran and North Korea.

[Damien Spleeters]

I don't think you can in the same breath say that your war economy is doing great and rely on North Korea for weapons. You know, it doesn't really make sense.

[Karen Duffin]

And they're weapons that have clearly not been pulled out of a large stockpile.

[Damien Spleeters]

No, I mean, the shahed we see are produced a month or two before they are being used. It's very, very rapid.

[Karen Duffin]

It will take time to know for sure, even a few years. Damien said. But for now, you can count him skeptical about those stockpiling claims. More likely, they're just a bluff. President Trump initially promised to end the war in just 24 hours, so he is likely looking for leverage wherever he can get it. And this is the beauty of a scrappy tech detective like Damien. They can find powerful evidence in the most mundane of places, in serial numbers and supply chains, in components and scraps.

[Damien Spleeters]

Our adversaries are very crafty, very creative. They don't have to play by the rules. And therefore we need to out innovate them. We need to be more creative than them in order to be a step ahead of them and not them being a step ahead of us. You know, whether you want to be the hunter or the prey, it's up to you.

[Karen Duffin]

And in conflict, it isn't just the missiles that make the victor, it's the facts. Something that can be hard to decipher in the fog of war.

[Damien Spleeters]

One of the first things that dies in conflict is like the truth. These artifacts have, and they hold in them a piece of truth that can be extracted. If you look at it, you know, long enough and well enough.

[Karen Duffin]

And for Damien, Spleeters, that truth isn't hidden. It's just scattered, waiting for someone like him, someone patient enough to collect it.

[Dina Templewraston]

That was Karen Duffin, investigators like Damian Spleeter, spend their days piecing together wreckage, tracing where a weapon came from and how it reached the battlefield on the front lines. Officers like Jeanne experience the story on the other end as a sound overhead, an impact, the damage left behind two vantage points on the same war four years in, one looking backward through debris and the other bracing for what comes next. Together, they reveal how conflict has changed. This is Click Here. Click Here is a production of Recorded Future News and prx. Today's show was written and produced by Megan Dietrich, Sean Powers, Erica Guida, Zach Hirsch and Casey Georgie. It was edited by Karen Duffin and Sarah Covedo and Fact Checked by Darren Ancrum. Original music is by Ben Levingston, with additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley, our illustrator is Megan Gough, and our sound designers and engineers are Jake Cook and Jesse Niswonger. Find us on X or Facebook at Click Here. Show or leave us a voice message at 661-5ch. Talk sometimes we'll turn those moments into reporting, sometimes into a conversation, and sometimes into a future story you'll hear on this show. I'm Dena Temple Rastin, and thanks for listening.

[Karen Duffin]

Support for this program comes from Recorded Future. In cybersecurity, the biggest risk isn't what can be seen, it's what gets missed. Recorded Future analyzes billions of signals to help organizations stay ahead of threats. Recorded Future Know what matters? Act first. Looking for more of the cybersecurity and intelligence coverage you get on Click Here. Then check out our sister publication the

[Dina Templewraston]

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[Dina Templewraston]

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[Damien Spleeters]

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[Dina Templewraston]

Just go to the Record Media.